48 Years Later, Jackie Chan's Drunken Master Finds New U.S. Audience

With more than 150 acting credits, Jackie Chan has been a fixture of martial arts cinema since the 1960s. He began in background roles and broke out in Hong Kong with Snake in the Eagles' Shadow in 1978, then reached global fame with his second 1978 hit, Drunken Master.

Forty-eight years after its debut, streaming data from Flix Patrol shows Drunken Master drawing renewed interest in the U.S. The film has ranked among Tubi’s top movies this past week, peaking at number nine on a chart led by Armageddon, Black and Blue and Beauty Shop.

Chan plays Wong Fei-Hung, a young man trained in drunken-style kung-fu by an uncle after his father's patience runs out, a role that mixed physical skill and comedy. The film earned an 81% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes and an even higher audience score, helping define Chan's screen persona; its 1994 sequel, The Legend of the Drunken Master, holds an 85% critics' score.

United States

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